893.00/9–946
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs (Vincent)48
| Participants: | Dr. Tan Shao-hwa, Minister-Counselor, Chinese Embassy; |
| John Carter Vincent, FE. |
Dr. Tan called at my request to take delivery of the President’s letter to Ambassador Koo49 containing a message from the President to President Chiang Kai-shek.
I told Dr. Tan we had no intention of taking sides in China’s civil war, but we continued in our desire to aid China in reconstruction just as soon as a political settlement along lines advocated by General Marshall could be achieved.
[Page 164]Dr. Tan spoke of the great difficulties in arriving at any agreement with the Chinese Communists. He said that their organization and methods made it impossible to work with them. He said that all thinking Chinese desired to avoid civil war but that the Chinese Government felt that it must take effective measures to prevent the Russians from having direct contact with and giving military assistance to the Chinese Communists.
I told him that the military measures that they were using now would seem very clearly calculated to bring about the very situation which he claimed the Government was endeavoring to avoid. Certainly, if Chiang followed the advice of Marshall and declared a truce the Russians would find it difficult to intervene in a non-existent civil war; whereas a spread of the civil strife might cause the Russians to assist the Chinese Communists.
Dr. Tan, while admitting the impossibility of eliminating Chinese Communists from China by force, seemed to think that they could in some way be immunized in so far as Russia was concerned. He ignored the fact that military action is forcing the Chinese Communists back on the Russians.
I expressed the view that a reduction in the influence of the Communists might be more readily achieved if the Government “took them in” (in more senses than one) on a minority basis rather than try to shoot them all. I felt, and I was sure General Marshall felt, that a National Government moving ahead with American support in the job of rehabilitation and reconstruction would have a better chance to cut the ground out from under the Communists, even though they were in the Government, than it would have of doing so by keeping them out of the Government and endeavoring to eliminate them by force. I reminded him that 15 years intermittent efforts to eliminate them by force when they were receiving no support from Russia had certainly not proved successful.
At this juncture Dr. Tan asked me whether General Marshall’s recent reports were optimistic and whether he indicated that he thought the Kuomintang more reasonable than the Communists or vice versa. I told him that General Marshall’s reports could not be called optimistic but that they still showed characteristic determination to stick with the problem. I told him that General Marshall felt strongly that Chiang Kai-shek should declare at this time a general truce in order to allow the political discussions in the Stuart Committee to move forward with a view to formation of a State Council and Cabinet, adoption of a Constitution, in line with the Peoples Consultative Conference Resolution of last January, and integration of all armed forces into a National Army in accordance with the agreement of last February.
[Page 165]There ensued some discussion of problems in connection with Communism in eastern Europe. Dr. Tan said that the position of the National Government in China was entirely different from the situation in eastern Europe. He spoke of the ignorance of the Chinese masses, their susceptibility to Communist propaganda, and the unfair methods of the Communist Party. I told him that I could not see that there was any great difference; that I thought the average Chinese peasant was just about as smart as a Rumanian or Hungarian peasant; and that it seemed to me that the main hurdle the Kuomintang had to take was psychological. The Party had had monopolistic control of the Chinese Government for so long that it was scared to death of admitting competition in any form. If the Party showed as much zeal for bringing good government to China as it was showing for eliminating opposition there would be no question but that it could “out-compete” the Communists in gaining support of the Chinese people who did not favor Communism but simply wanted some evidence of government “for the people”.